In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Symposium: The Future of the Art Museum: Curatorial and Educational Perspectives:IntroductionDaniel A. SiedellIntroductionThere are few futures pondered more often than the art museum's. The new millennium has spawned a veritable cottage industry of such prognostication. Most of it has occurred from the perspectives of building expansion, audience growth, and collection development. These are not, by any means, unimportant considerations. However, such sustained attention to them by directors, marketers, board (...) members, collectors, and the mass media tend to obscure the fact that these areas of concern are not ends in themselves. A new museum wing, higher attendance, and more gifts of art to the collection mean little unless they serve to facilitate specific curatorial and educational ends, which themselves are in the service of expanding and deepening their capacity to enhance the experience of art. The future of the art museum rests on the ability of curators and educators to develop new and more robust curatorial and educational work that is responsive to both the larger culture and to the vocational standards of their respective professions. Curators and educators need, then, to be more self-critical of their practices.This symposium brings together a few of these professionals to reflect on the future of the art museum from the perspective of those involved in the day-to-day production, presentation, and interpretation of works of art. It is occasioned by the publication of David Carrier's book, Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries, recently published by Duke University Press, and more specifically, Carrier's conclusion, which offers its own reflection on the future of the art museum. A frequent contributor to the Journal of Aesthetic Education, Carrier is a philosopher and art critic whose interests range widely from the art criticism of John Ruskin and Adrian Stokes to the writing of art history and the paintings of Sean Scully.1 Carrier's book, written while a scholar in residence at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, explores the history and philosophy of art museums from the point of view of the narratives on which they rely as well as produce. And it is narratives that art educators and curators produce, affirm, and expand when they curate exhibitions and do educational programming.Because they are "public" institutions (even when they are private organizations) and serve many competing audience constituencies, art museums [End Page 1] often suffer from an acute identity crisis, even while they build large expansions, engage in aggressive campaigns to court collectors, placate increasingly more powerful governing boards, and expand their programming to the point that it ceases to be education. The business of the art museum often masks these deep crises, which eventually become a neurosis that plagues curatorial and educational practice. A symptom of this illness can be seen in the misplaced tension between curators and educators as a battle between the "scholars" and the "popularizers," the "elites" and the "community."In 1946 Alfred H. Barr Jr. of the Museum of Modern Art presented a paper called "Research and Publication in Art Museums."2 In it Barr not only recognizes the importance of museum scholarship; he argues that such scholarship, unlike that of the academic art historian, must engage and interact with "the man off the street." Indeed, Barr passionately believed that museum scholarship not only could but should engage a broader and more diverse public all the while remaining committed to scholarly ideals. Barr acknowledges the tensions between museums as "popular community centers" and museums as places of "research and publication." But, he continues, "Both can be done provided we have enough faith to believe in the values of both and enough skill to persuade others to agree with us."3 Barr's expansive definition of scholarship is instructive and a challenge. "By publication I mean not only the scholarly treatise but also the popular article or book, the classroom or public lecture, the gallery talk, publicity releases."4 For Barr, scholarship is not merely a curator's or educator's opportunity to address her professional colleagues and strengthen guild rank; it is a value that is infused throughout all work... (shrink)

Is liberal democracy appropriate for East Asia? In this provocative book, Daniel Bell argues for morally legitimate alternatives to Western-style liberal democracy in the region. Beyond Liberal Democracy, which continues the author's influential earlier work, is divided into three parts that correspond to the three main hallmarks of liberal democracy--human rights, democracy, and capitalism. These features have been modified substantially during their transmission to East Asian societies that have been shaped by nonliberal practices and values. Bell points to the dangers (...) of implementing Western-style models and proposes alternative justifications and practices that may be more appropriate for East Asian societies. If human rights, democracy, and capitalism are to take root and produce beneficial outcomes in East Asia, Bell argues, they must be adjusted to contemporary East Asian political and economic realities and to the values of nonliberal East Asian political traditions such as Confucianism and Legalism. Local knowledge is therefore essential for realistic and morally informed contributions to debates on political reform in the region, as well as for mutual learning and enrichment of political theories. Beyond Liberal Democracy is indispensable reading for students and scholars of political theory, Asian studies, and human rights, as well as anyone concerned about China's political and economic future and how Western governments and organizations should engage with China. (shrink)

In this article we focus on three key precepts shared by Confucianism and the African ethic of Ubuntu: the central value of community, the desirability of ethical partiality, and the idea that we tend to become morally better as we grow older. For each of these broad similarities, there are key differences underlying them, and we discuss those as well as speculate about the reasons for them. Our aim is not to take sides, but we do suggest ways that Ubuntu (...) and Confucianism might have something to learn from each other and perhaps come closer. We hope that our preliminary reflections can inspire further debate and thinking on a theme – dialogues between long-standing and large-scale non-Western traditions – that is bound to increase in importance as non-Western societies play a greater role in the global system and as the search continues for a 'global ethic'. (shrink)

A trenchant defense of hierarchy in different spheres of our lives, from the personal to the political All complex and large-scale societies are organized along certain hierarchies, but the concept of hierarchy has become almost taboo in the modern world. Just Hierarchy contends that this stigma is a mistake. In fact, as Daniel Bell and Wang Pei show, it is neither possible nor advisable to do away with social hierarchies. Drawing their arguments from Chinese thought and culture as well as (...) other philosophies and traditions, Bell and Wang ask which forms of hierarchy are justified and how these can serve morally desirable goals. They look at ways of promoting just forms of hierarchy while minimizing the influence of unjust ones, such as those based on race, sex, or caste. Which hierarchical relations are morally justified and why? Bell and Wang argue that it depends on the nature of the social relation and context. Different hierarchical principles ought to govern different kinds of social relations: what justifies hierarchy among intimates is different from what justifies hierarchy among citizens, countries, humans and animals, and humans and intelligent machines. Morally justified hierarchies can and should govern different spheres of our social lives, though these will be very different from the unjust hierarchies that have governed us in the past. A vigorous, systematic defense of hierarchy in the modern world, Just Hierarchy examines how hierarchical social relations can have a useful purpose, not only in personal domains but also in larger political realms. (shrink)

Claims pertaining to understanding are made in a variety of contexts and ways. As a result, few in the philosophical literature have made an attempt to precisely characterize the state that is y understanding x. This paper builds an account that does just that. The account is motivated by two main observations. First, understanding x is somehow related to being able to manipulate x. Second, understanding is a mental phenomenon, and so what manipulations are required to be an understander must (...) only be mental manipulations. Combining these two insights, the paper builds an account (URM) of understanding as a certain representational capacity—specifically, understanding x involves possessing a representation of x that could be manipulated in useful ways. By tying understanding to representation, the account correctly identifies that understanding is a fundamentally cognitive achievement. However, by also demanding that which representations count as understanding-conferring be determined by their practical effects, URM captures the insight that understanding is vitally connected to practice. URM is fully general, and can apply equally well to understanding states of affairs, understanding events, and even understanding people and works of art. The ultimate test of URM is its applicability in actual scientific and philosophical discourse. To that end the paper discusses the importance of understanding in the philosophy of science, psychology, and computer science. (shrink)

Mechanistic explanation has an impressive track record of advancing our understanding of complex, hierarchically organized physical systems, particularly biological and neural systems. But not every complex system can be understood mechanistically. Psychological capacities are often understood by providing cognitive models of the systems that underlie them. I argue that these models, while superficially similar to mechanistic models, in fact have a substantially more complex relation to the real underlying system. They are typically constructed using a range of techniques for abstracting (...) the functional properties of the system, which may not coincide with its mechanistic organization. I describe these techniques and show that despite being non-mechanistic, these cognitive models can satisfy the normative constraints on good explanations. (shrink)

The rise of China, along with problems of governance in democratic countries, has reinvigorated the theory of political meritocracy. But what is the theory of political meritocracy and how can it set standards for evaluating political progress? To help answer these questions, this volume gathers a series of commissioned research papers from an interdisciplinary group of leading philosophers, historians and social scientists. The result is the first book in decades to examine the rise of political meritocracy and what it will (...) mean for political developments in China and the rest of the world. Despite its limitations, meritocracy has contributed much to human flourishing in East Asia and beyond and will continue to do so in the future. This book is essential reading for those who wish to further the debate and perhaps even help to implement desirable forms of political change. (shrink)

What is understanding? My goal in this paper is to lay out a new approach to this question and clarify how that approach deals with certain issues. The claim is that understanding is a matter of compressing information about the understood so that it can be mentally useful. On this account, understanding amounts to having a representational kernel and the ability to use it to generate the information one needs regarding the target phenomenon. I argue that this ambitious new account (...) can accommodate much of the data that has motivated theories of understanding in philosophy of science, and can also be generally applicable in epistemology and daily life as well. (shrink)

A trenchant defense of hierarchy in different spheres of our lives, from the personal to the political All complex and large-scale societies are organized along certain hierarchies, but the concept of hierarchy has become almost taboo in the modern world. Just Hierarchy contends that this stigma is a mistake. In fact, as Daniel Bell and Wang Pei show, it is neither possible nor advisable to do away with social hierarchies. Drawing their arguments from Chinese thought and culture as well as (...) other philosophies and traditions, Bell and Wang ask which forms of hierarchy are justified and how these can serve morally desirable goals. They look at ways of promoting just forms of hierarchy while minimizing the influence of unjust ones, such as those based on race, sex, or caste. Which hierarchical relations are morally justified and why? Bell and Wang argue that it depends on the nature of the social relation and context. Different hierarchical principles ought to govern different kinds of social relations: what justifies hierarchy among intimates is different from what justifies hierarchy among citizens, countries, humans and animals, and humans and intelligent machines. Morally justified hierarchies can and should govern different spheres of our social lives, though these will be very different from the unjust hierarchies that have governed us in the past. A vigorous, systematic defense of hierarchy in the modern world, Just Hierarchy examines how hierarchical social relations can have a useful purpose, not only in personal domains but also in larger political realms. (shrink)

Is liberal democracy a universal ideal? Proponents of "Asian values" argue that it is a distinctive product of the Western experience and that Western powers shouldn't try to push human rights and democracy onto Asian states. Liberal democrats in the West typically counter by questioning the motives of Asian critics, arguing that Asian leaders are merely trying to rationalize human-rights violations and authoritarian rule. In this book--written as a dialogue between an American democrat named Demo and three East Asian critics--Daniel (...) A. Bell attempts to chart a middle ground between the extremes of the international debate on human rights and democracy.Bell criticizes the use of "Asian values" to justify oppression, but also draws on East Asian cultural traditions and contributions by contemporary intellectuals in East Asia to identify some powerful challenges to Western-style liberal democracy. In the first part of the book, Bell makes use of colorful stories and examples to show that there is a need to take into account East Asian perspectives on human rights and democracy. The second part--a fictitious dialogue between Demo and Asian senior statesman Lee Kuan Yew--examines the pros and cons of implementing Western-style democracy in Singapore. The third part of the book is an argument for an as-yet-unrealized Confucian political institution that justifiably differs from Western-style liberal democracy.This is a thought-provoking defense of distinctively East Asian challenges to Western-style liberal democracy that will stimulate interest and debate among students of political theory, Asian studies, and international human rights. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that explanations just ARE those sorts of things that, under the right circumstances and in the right sort of way, bring about understanding. This raises the question of why such a seemingly simple account of explanation, if correct, would not have been identified and agreed upon decades ago. The answer is that only recently has it been made possible to analyze explanation in terms of understanding without the risk of collapsing both to merely phenomenological states. (...) For the most part, theories of explanation were for 50 years held hostage to the historical accident that they far outstripped in sophistication corresponding accounts of understanding. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two questions: Is understanding intimately bound up with accurately representing the world? Is understanding intimately bound up with downstream abilities? We will argue that the answer to both these questions is “yes”, and for the same reason-both accuracy and ability are important elements of orthogonal evaluative criteria along which understanding can be assessed. More precisely, we will argue that representational-accuracy and intelligibility are good-making features of a state of understanding. Interestingly, both evaluative claims have been defended (...) by philosophers in the literature on understanding as the criterion of evaluation. We argue that proponents of both approaches have important insights and that, drawing on both their own observations and a few novel arguments, we can construct a more complete picture of understanding evaluation. We thus posit the theory of there being Multiple Understanding Dimensions. The main thing to note about our dualism regarding the evaluative criteria of understanding is that it accounts for the intuitions about cases underlying both previously held positions. (shrink)

The view that special science properties are multiply realizable has been attacked in recent years by Shapiro, Bechtel and Mundale, Polger, and others. Focusing on psychological and neuroscientific properties, I argue that these attacks are unsuccessful. By drawing on interspecies physiological comparisons I show that diverse physical mechanisms can converge on common functional properties at multiple levels. This is illustrated with examples from the psychophysics and neuroscience of early vision. This convergence is compatible with the existence of general constraints on (...) the evolution of cognitive systems, and does not involve any ad hoc typing of coarse-grained higher level properties. The mechanisms that realize these common higher level properties are really distinct by the criteria laid down by critics of multiple readability. Finally, I present an account of how such functional properties might constitute special science kinds by playing a central explanatory role in a range of cognitive models. Behavioral science kinds in particular are the functionally defined constituents picked out by our most successful models of the multilevel systems and mechanisms that explain cognitive capacities. (shrink)

As social and economic injustice spreads from the historically marginalized to the 99 per cent both symbolically and realistically that which concerned the few now openly confronts the majority. This publication inquires into the contemporary moment through the proposition of the Roma model of existence as it resonates within artistic practice and civic imagination. By reversing outsider status, can we, with the emblematic claim that we are all Roma, invoke alternate futures? Artists, theorists and activists of both Roma and non-Roma (...) origin speculate upon the possibilities in this selection of new and anthologized texts. Includes contributions by Zygmunt Bauman, Ethel Brooks, Sanja Ivekovic' and Salman Rushdie, among others. (shrink)

This dissertation consists in a philosophically constructive engagement with two different critiques of the Buddhist epistemological tradition stemming from Dignaga and Dharmakirti . The tradition of Dignaga and Dharmakirti, which was particularly important to the development of pan-Indian canons of reasoned argumentation, may plausibly be characterized as foundationalist. The traditions that follow the epistemologists in deploying these canons of reasoning are often taken as coextensive with or definitive of "philosophy" in classical India. Against this current, the dissertation aims at retrieving (...) and sympathetically elaborating some voices of philosophical dissent from this tradition. ;Specifically, the dissertation considers two significant but understudied critiques of the Buddhist epistemologists. First is that of one of the orthodox Brahmanical schools, viz., Purva Mimam&dotbelow;sa, whose constitutive concern is with the interpretation and authority of the earliest Vedic literature. It is argued that the characteristically Mimam&dotbelow;sa doctrine of "intrinsic validity" is best understood as a critique of the Buddhist tradition of epistemology, and that the Mimam&dotbelow;sa doctrine is analogous to contemporary "reformed epistemology." More attention is given to the critique of epistemology advanced by another Buddhist, the Madhyamika philosopher Candrakirti . Unlike that of Mimam&dotbelow;sa, Candrakirti's arguments amount to a principled refusal of epistemology. It is argued that the logically distinct character of Candrakirti's arguments is best understood by characterizing them as transcendental arguments, with this characterization of Candrakirti's thought facilitating the resolution of what have long been exegetical difficulties in his work. This characterization is meant more generally to advance the idea that there can be principled refusals of epistemological discourse which, insofar as they are based in good reasons for refusing such discourse, deserve to be taken as properly philosophical alternatives to epistemology. Thus, the arguments of these premodern Indian philosophers are not only examined and explicated, but critically assessed, such that they might be seen as representing philosophical interlocutors whose voices can be brought to bear on issues of concern to contemporary philosophers of religion. (shrink)

Defenders of the extended mind thesis say that it is possible that some of our mental states may be constituted, in part, by states of the extra-bodily environment. Often they also add that such extended mentation is a commonplace phenomenon. I argue that extended mentation, while not impossible, is either nonexistent or far from widespread. Genuine beliefs as they occur in normal biologically embodied systems are informationally integrated with each other, and sensitive to changes in the person.

Robert Veatch has claimed that virtue theory is not only irrelevant but potentially dangerous in medical ethics. I argue that virtue is a far more prominent factor in contemporary medical practice than Veatch admits. Even if ‘stranger medicine’ is taken as the norm, proper conduct on the part of physicians depends on certain character traits in order to be maintained consistently over a long period of time and in situations which run counter to the physician's own interests. Right conduct, which (...) Veatch argues is the central moral issue in the physician-patient relationship, is intertwined with certain virtues. Moreover, the virtue of integrity and the concept of a unified lifenarrative are especially useful in analyzing an important factor missing in modern medicine. And since medicine relies necessarily on some concept of human flourishing I argue that virtue theory can play a central role in helping to determine the goals of medical practice. Keywords: virtue, right conduct, character, competence, life-narrative, specialization, human flourishing CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Four experiments investigate the folk concept of “understanding,” in particular when and why it is deployed differently from the concept of knowledge. We argue for the positions that people have higher demands with respect to explanatory depth when it comes to attributing understanding, and that this is true, in part, because understanding attributions play a functional role in identifying experts who should be heeded with respect to the general field in question. These claims are supported by our findings that people (...) differentially withhold attributions of understanding when the object of attribution has minimal explanatory information. We also show that this tendency significantly correlates with people’s willingness to defer to others as potential experts. This work bears on a pressing issue in epistemology concerning the place and value of understanding. Our results also provide reason against positing a simple equation of knowledge and understanding. We contend that, because deference plays a crucial role in many aspects of everyday reasoning, the fact that we use understanding attributions to demarcate experts reveals a potential mechanism for achieving our epistemic aims in many domains. (shrink)

Natural kind concepts have the function of tracking categories that exist independently of our beliefs and purposes. But not all ways of tracking categories in the natural world involve conceiving of them as natural kinds. Anthropic concepts represent groups of natural, mind‐independent entities that are apt for serving various human interests, goals, and projects. They represent the natural world under a practical mode of presentation, as a set of material resources that can be transformed to further a host of functions (...) and ends. I argue that cross‐cultural studies of traditional ecological knowledge provide evidence that many chemical, mineral, and biological concepts that are frequently taken to be natural kind concepts turn out on closer inspection to be anthropic concepts. Anthropic concepts are distinguished from artifact concepts, and a form of realism about the anthropic kinds that they refer to is defended. (shrink)

We often need to have beliefs about things on which we are not experts. Luckily, we often have access to expert judgements on such topics. But how should we form our beliefs on the basis of expert opinion when experts conflict in their judgments? This is the core of the novice/2-expert problem in social epistemology. A closely related question is important in the context of policy making: how should a policy maker use expert judgments when making policy in domains in (...) which she is not herself an expert? This question is more complex, given the messy and strategic nature of politics. In this paper we argue that the prediction with expert advice framework from machine learning provides helpful tools for addressing these problems. We outline conditions under which we should expert PWEA to be helpful and those under which we should not expect these methods to perform well. (shrink)

Analytic Philosophy, Volume 62, Issue 1, Page 33-56, March 2021.

Certain of our concepts are innate, but many others are learned. Despite the plausibility of this claim, some have argued that the very idea of concept learning is incoherent. I present a conception of learning that sidesteps the arguments against the possibility of concept learning, and sketch several mechanisms that result in the generation of new primitive concepts. Given the rational considerations that motivate their deployment, I argue that these deserve to be called learning mechanisms. I conclude by replying to (...) the objections that these mechanisms cannot produce genuinely new content and cannot be part of genuinely cognitive explanations. (shrink)

Conceptual atomists argue that most of our concepts are primitive. I take up three arguments that have been thought to support atomism and show that they are inconclusive. The evidence that allegedly backs atomism is equally compatible with a localist position on which concepts are structured representations with complex semantic content. I lay out such a localist position and argue that the appropriate position for a non-atomist to adopt is a pluralist view of conceptual structure. I show several ways in (...) which conceptual pluralism provides an advantage in satisfying the empirical and philosophical demands on a theory of conceptual structure and content. (shrink)

As a strategy for exploring the relationship between understanding and knowledge, we consider whether epistemic luck – which is typically thought to undermine knowledge – undermines understanding. Questions about the etiology of understanding have also been at the heart of recent theoretical debates within epistemology. Kvanvig (2003) put forward the argument that there could be lucky understanding and produced an example that he deemed persuasive. Grimm (2006) responded with a case that, he argued, demonstrated that there could not be lucky (...) understanding. In this paper, we empirically examine how participants' patterns of understanding attributions line up with the predictions of Kvanvig and Grimm. We argue that the data challenge Kvanvig's position. People do not differentiate between knowing-why and understanding-why on the basis of proper etiology: attributions of knowledge and understanding involve comparable (and minimal) roles for epistemic luck. We thus posit that folk knowledge and understanding are etiologically symmetrical. (shrink)

The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test versus (...) a reverse test, analogous to the normal and revolutionary phases of the scientific process. Contemporary theories of consciousness are forward tests for consciousness, in that they strive to become a means to classify the level of consciousness of arbitrary states and systems. Yet no such theory of consciousness has earned sufficient confidence such that it might be actually used as a forward test in ambiguous settings. What is needed now is thus a legitimate reverse test for theories of consciousness, to provide internal and external calibration of different frameworks. A reverse test for consciousness would ideally look like a method for referencing theories of consciousness to a tractable model system. We introduce the Ant Colony Test as a rigorous reverse test for consciousness. We show that social insect colonies, though disaggregated collectives, fulfill many of the prerequisites for conscious awareness met by humans and honey bee workers. A long lineage of philosophically-neutral neurobehavioral, evolutionary, and ecological studies on social insect colonies can thus be redeployed for the study of consciousness in general. We suggest that the ACT can provide insight into the nature of consciousness, and highlight the ant colony as a model system for ethically performing clarifying experiments about consciousness. (shrink)

In recent decades, attempts to explain autism have been frustrated by the heterogeneous nature of its behavioral symptoms and the underlying genetic, neural, and cognitive mechanisms that produce them. This has led some to propose eliminating the category altogether. The eliminativist inference relies on a conception of psychiatric categories as kinds defined by their underlying mechanistic structure. I review the evidence for eliminativism and propose an alternative model of the family of autisms. On this account, autism is a network category (...) defined by a set of idealized exemplars linked by multiple levels of theoretically significant properties. I argue that this network model better captures the empirical phenomena, the historical growth of the category, and the ways the category has been shaped by social norms and interests. Finally, I defend a realist interpretation of network categories against the challenge from eliminativists. (shrink)

The Singer-Regan debate -- Reciprocity -- Frey's challenge -- The criticisms of Leahy and Carruthers -- The great ape project and slavery -- The Nozick-Rachels debate.

Neuroscience constrains psychology, but stating these constraints with precision is not simple. Here I consider whether mechanistic analysis provides a useful way to integrate models of cognitive and neural structure. Recent evidence suggests that cognitive systems map onto overlapping, distributed networks of brain regions. These highly entangled networks often depart from stereotypical mechanistic behaviors. While this casts doubt on the prospects for classical mechanistic integration of psychology and neuroscience, I argue that it does not impugn a realistic interpretation of either (...) type of model. Cognitive and neural models may depict different, but equally real, causal structures within the mind/brain. (shrink)

Kripke has noted that possible worlds are stipulated, not discovered, and that the stipulation of these worlds allows us to separate accidental from essential properties. In this paper I argue that possible worlds theory gives us an important tool for analyzing what Descartes is doing in the Meditations. The first Meditation becomes a thought experiment in which possible realities are stipulated in a search for one or more essential properties. Viewing the doubt in this manner sheds new light on the (...) cogito and sum res cogitans and shows the limitations of some contemporary discussion of the cogito, namely, the positions taken by Ayer and Hintikka. (shrink)

Kripke has noted that possible worlds are stipulated, not discovered, and that the stipulation of these worlds allows us to separate accidental from essential properties. In this paper I argue that possible worlds theory gives us an important tool for analyzing what Descartes is doing in the Meditations. The first Meditation becomes a thought experiment in which possible realities are stipulated in a search for one or more essential properties. Viewing the doubt in this manner sheds new light on the (...) cogito and sum res cogitans and shows the limitations of some contemporary discussion of the cogito, namely, the positions taken by Ayer and Hintikka. (shrink)

I WANT TO EXPLORE in this paper the relationship between ethical decisions, possible worlds, and certain types of emotions that Moravscik has called "Platonic attitudes." I will argue that what constitutes reflection in ethical decision-making involves imagining the possible world of another entity, a world that is contingent on an action that we have the power to perform. Ethical counterfactuals posit materially possible worlds or logically possible worlds and in both cases always include an affective element. That is, along with (...) imagining the properties of a projected world, an ethical counterfactual incorporates a realization of how that world would be experienced. I will argue below that the affective element is present even in deontology. Both the emotional factor and the future orientation of the possibilities distinguish ethical counterfactuals from the purely epistemic possible worlds discussed by Kripke and others. We can make a further distinction between types of emotions and utilize Moravscik's point that emotional states based on properties that can be rationally spelled out possess special characteristics. One of these characteristics is that these states, and only these, serve as focal points for imagining the possible world of another person. (shrink)

Human Excellence introduces the basic ideas of virtue theory, the branch of ethics that analyzes character. The author accomplishes this by systematically and carefully exploring the role of character in ethics through a series of dialogues. He begins by contrasting virtue ethics with other ethical views such as egoism, utilitarianism, and rights theories. Then he explores issues including the nature of courage, the problem of healthy versus unhealthy self-love, character and parenting techniques, the nature of friendship, and the relationship of (...) virtue to the current debate on the "ethics of care." The advantage of the author's approach is its practicality, making the material not only understandable, but applicable to exploring the self and systems in place in the world. (shrink)

Self-Deception has traditionally been discussed in the literature in utilitarian terms. I argue in this paper that, As a defect of character, Self-Deception can be understood much more clearly using the concepts of virtue theory. I apply macintyre's distinction between internal and external goods and his discussion about the unity of a life-Narrative to self-Deception. The result is to clarify why self-Deception is a vice and when it might be justified on utilitarian grounds.

Interviews Professor Wang, a political philosopher at Beijing University about the political reforms in China. Explanation on a democratic political system with Chinese characteristics; Confucian tradition of respect for a ruling intellectual elite; Relevance of Confucian scholar Huang Zongxi's proposal for reform.

Concept empiricists are committed to the claim that the vehicles of thought are re-activated perceptual representations. Evidence for empiricism comes from a range of neuroscientific studies showing that perceptual regions of the brain are employed during cognitive tasks such as categorization and inference. I examine the extant neuroscientific evidence and argue that it falls short of establishing this core empiricist claim. During conceptual tasks, the causal structure of the brain produces widespread activity in both perceptual and non-perceptual systems. I lay (...) out several conditions on what is required for a neural state to be a realizer of the functional role played by concepts, and argue that no subset of this activity can be singled out as the unique neural vehicle of conceptual thought. Finally, I suggest that, while the strongest form of empiricism is probably false, the evidence is consistent with several weaker forms of empiricism. (shrink)

The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test versus (...) a reverse test, analogous to the normal and revolutionary phases of the scientific process. Contemporary theories of consciousness are forward tests for consciousness, in that they strive to become a means to classify the level of consciousness of arbitrary states and systems. Yet no such theory of consciousness has earned sufficient confidence such that it might be actually used as a forward test in ambiguous settings. What is needed now is thus a legitimate reverse test for theories of consciousness, to provide internal and external calibration of different frameworks. A reverse test for consciousness would ideally look like a method for referencing theories of consciousness to a tractable (and non-human) model system. We introduce the Ant Colony Test (ACT) as a rigorous reverse test for consciousness. We show that social insect colonies, though disaggregated collectives, fulfill many of the prerequisites for conscious awareness met by humans and honey bee workers. A long lineage of philosophically-neutral neurobehavioral, evolutionary, and ecological studies on social insect colonies can thus be redeployed for the study of consciousness in general. We suggest that the ACT can provide insight into the nature of consciousness, and highlight the ant colony as a model system for ethically performing clarifying experiments about consciousness. (shrink)